Mali attackers ‘were ready to die’
Terrorists timed rampage for moment when guards were unarmed for shift change
BAMAKO, MALI— The heavily armed Islamic extremists who shot up a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital, killing 19 people, timed their assault for the moment when guards would be the most lax, allowing them to easily blast their way past a five-man security team before turning their weapons on terrified guests, a security guard and witnesses said Saturday.
The timing suggested a wellplanned operation that analysts say could be an attempt by Al Qaeda to assert its relevance amid high-profile attacks by the rival Islamic State group.
The attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako began at around 7 a.m. Friday morning when two gunmen, approaching on foot, reached the entrance where five guards who had worked the night shift were waiting to be replaced by a new team, said Cheick Dabo, one of the guards.
The guards had just finished the morning prayer and had put their weapons — a shotgun and two pistols — away in their vehicle when the militants struck.
“We didn’t see the jihadists until they started firing on us. We weren’t concentrating and we didn’t expect it,” he said.
Four of the guards were shot, one fatally, while Dabo himself managed to hide under a car.
All the Canadians known to have been in the hotel are safe, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion said Friday. A clerk for the House of Commons, an employee of Quebec’s national assembly and a lawyer for McCarthy Tétrault were among the Canadians in the Radisson at the time of the attack. Two employees of Vancouverbased B2Gold Corp. were also staying at the hotel.
Government critics in Mali have attacked the level of security at the hotel and in the country, but Interior Minister Salif Traoré said Saturday that there was little to be done in the face of such determined attackers.
“They were ready to die, so the level of security is hardly important,” he told reporters.
“The Radisson hotel had a level of security that was considered good,” Traoré added.
Once inside, at least one of the assailants headed for the kitchen and restaurant, sparking pandemonium, said Mohammed Coulibaly, a cook at the hotel.
“I was busy cooking when a waitress started screaming at the door, ‘They are attacking us, they are attacking us!’ ” Coulibaly said. “I asked everyone to go into the hallway, so everyone headed in that direction. Suddenly, we heard the footsteps of the jihadists behind us and there was total panic and people were running in every direction.”
Coulibaly said he hid in a bathroom with one of the guests, but an assailant saw him through a window and started firing, prompting him to run to the kitchen where he was nearly overwhelmed by smoke.
“I realized that if I didn’t leave the kitchen the smoke would kill me. So I waited until I didn’t hear any noise and I ran from the kitchen and escaped the hotel through a window,” he said.
By that point, the attackers were heading upstairs where they took dozens of hostages, launching a standoff with Malian security forces that lasted more than seven hours and claimed 19 lives in addition to their own.
All but one of the victims were hotel guests.
Speaking to reporters briefly after visiting the hotel on Saturday, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said the attack underscored the global threat posed by Islamic extremists, especially coming just one week after teams of attackers from Islamic State in Paris killed at least 130 people while targeting multiple sites in the city.
“These people have attacked Paris and other places. Nowhere is excluded,” Keita said. Army Maj. Modibo Nama Traoré said earlier Saturday that security forces were hunting “more than three” suspects who may have been involved in the assault. The government on Friday declared a 10-day nationwide state of emergency and three days of national mourning beginning Monday.
The Radisson attack was claimed by Al-Mourabitoun (the Sentinels), an extremist group formed by notorious Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar, in a statement Friday that said it was carried out in co-operation with Al Qaeda’s “Sahara Emirate.”
Belmoktar, an Algerian militant and former Al Qaeda commander who has long been based in the Sahara, shot to prominence after his group carried out a January 2013 attack on an Algerian gas plant that resulted in the death of 39 foreign workers.